US Erection 12 *AND* 16 *AND* 20 *AND* 22 *AND* 24 *AND* Beyond

[Megaterio Llamas]

Regime change is going on in Nepal, the Philippines, and Indonesia at the same time right now with NED fingerprints all over each. Trump is as active as any Democratic regime has been recently.

So much for not getting involved in global entanglements eh


https://youtu.be/hAlKv4zawlg

[Megaterio Llamas]

Trump also seems to be making noises about going back to Afghanistan


https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump- ... us-control

[UWSaint]

The left brought cancel culture to the fore in the mid 2010's.....which was a form of social authoritarianism, and certainly social fascism.

From what I've seen, most of the 'cancel culture' from the left was done via social media, private people, etc. What the right is doing via government enforcement is totally different.

If a bunch of social media warriors tell me to cancel Disney - both sides have done this now I can ignore them.
If the government cancels Disney, that takes away my choice.

And now "tylenol causes autism"....

Did you miss the whole Covid response thing? https://judiciary.house.gov/sites/evo-s ... -final.pdf

Or when agents showed up at Matt Taibbi’s house the day he testified about his reporting on the Twitter files (or is intimidation different?)

Jailing people like Dinesh D’Souza for regulatory “crimes” that are typically handled with civil fines?

Or how about the whole campaigns against mis and dis and malformation campaigns using mis and dis and malinformation as the weapon….

Debanking? Just the bank’s free will, right? No pressure from regulators.

Or expanding J6 prosecutions beyond those who committed violence, vandalism, or other property damage.

I won’t defend Brendan Carr’s insinuation that the fcc would use its licensing power to respond to Kimmel or Bondi’s blathering about hate speech. But the idea that the Biden administration has clean hands is born of either partisan gaslighting or a kind of willful ignorance that is born of these echo chambers people accuse only their political opponents of being in.

Last bit, part of the reason I don’t like corporatism is that government uses private enterprise (ngos or corporations) to execute the actions government would prefer not to do directly. Branden Carr didn’t need to say anything; the licensed entities are always looking to please regulators, and how regulators seek their favor is generally not the stuff of podcast announcements.

[UWSaint]

And now "tylenol causes autism"....

FDA says associated with (correlation), not caused. Not enough data to make the causation conclusion.

Something is (or multiple things are) contributing to rising rates of autism, and I don’t buy that it is diagnostic standards alone (but I think plays some role).

Tylenol was pitched as a wonder drug, no side effects! Like aspirin before it, which acetaminophen largely substituted for because it, well, has some side effects. Then came ibuprofen; but that’s not perfect either. And for pain, how about them opiates? Pain relief a human right!

Point is, pharmaceuticals all follow a fairly predictable cycle. They are revolutionary! This is the one that prevents heart attacks, relieves pain, controls cholesterol, etc! This one is safe and effective!

And then through time the evidence always shows there’s no free lunch and there are no magic elixirs. Industry first circles wagons until they develop patented substitutes. And it begins again.

I am NOT making any claim about Tylenol’s causation of autism nor am I claiming Tylenol is on the wrong side of cost-benefit for most people. But the movie is on repeat, and the problems with exaggerated precaution are mirrored by those of false reassurance.

[Chef Boi RD]

UW, if I may, when I walk away from after having read one of your many well written posts on American politics, I am not left with the feeling of having learned something but only learning, confirming that you are very loyal to the MAGA movement.

[Per]

There is a large genetic component to both autism and adhd. And people genetically predisposed to autism/adhd are also more likely to suffer from migraine and certain types of autoimmune joint problems.

Thus women who carry these genes are more likely to take painkillers and more likely to have children with autism and/or adhd, which skewers studies that do not eliminate for this. There is a clear correlation, but most likely no cause and effect.

The largest study made on this so far shows no link between painkillers during pregnancy and autism.

https://news.ki.se/no-link-between-para ... n-children

It should also be noted that autism is not a disease. It is merely a different way of processing information which seems to be present at birth.
So far there have been no studies that have conclusively proven any link between environmental factors and autism.

And yeah, people with autism, like Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, often seem strange to us normies, but many of them lead very productive lives. The ones that are as seriously affected as the protagonist in Rainman are an outlier.

The idea that it must be treated is questionable. It is widely believed that Albert Einstein, Sir Isaac Newton, Benjamin Franklin, Mozart and Nikola Tesla also had autism. Would we really prefer that thay had all lived ordinary lives?

[Per]

As for the medicine suggested as a possible cure. .. Some people with autism have folic acid deficiency.
There have been suggestions that increasing the level of folic acid (or folates) in their system could have some effect on autism.

There have been no conclusive studies to prove this.

There can certainly be a case made that it could be a good idea to fund more studies on this, but this is also a case where they have not been able to show causation in one way or the other (low folate rates cause autism or autism causes low folate rates) or any proven effects of treatment.

But yeah, since there clearly is some sort of correlation, this should certainly be looked at in more detail.
I'm sure there are many scientists that would be interested in doing that.

While I maintain that it is questionable if all people with autism need to be "cured" from it, Anthony Hopkins and Dan Aykroyd seem to be doing just fine, those that are clearly crippled by it might benefit from a drug that has some sort of tempering effect on it.

[UWSaint]

Good posts re autism, Per, both on the questions that need to be asked when presented with correlative info (e.g., is there also correlation between painkiller use and underlying conditions that may have a causal influence) and also precaution about jumping to the conclusion that it needs to be "fixed" except in those circumstances where it is truly debilitating.

I think the same observation may apply to many of the mental conditions American society (not sure about Canada or Sweden) medicalizes -- ADHD, anxiety, depression -- and I bet we could also list a series of impressive creative people who have been afflicted with one or more of these. To be sure, I know people who's lives were transformed remarkably for the better when they took SSRIs, but there are many counterexamples of people who aren't materially better but just different. And dependent. And sadly, I have one friend who experienced the increased s**cidal ideations once on a new drug (known side effect) and then acted on it. I guess that ended his depression.

[UWSaint]

UW, if I may, when I walk away from after having read one of your many well written posts on American politics, I am not left with the feeling of having learned something but only learning, confirming that you are very loyal to the MAGA movement.

Then you probably have been reading my posts to figure out if I am loyal to MAGA instead of trying to determine whether the arguments make sense, which is too bad.

[Cornuck]

Interesting how I can find a short, nuanced discussion about this on a Canucks Hockey talk board than anywhere else online.

The end result is that we were given a sideshow that was based on little to no evidence. A stock's price tanks for no reason (unless you're trading). And we have more conspiracy and confusion in the medical field. There was no reason for the president to be involved, except that was a chance to be in front of the cameras.

[UWSaint]

Interesting how I can find a short, nuanced discussion about this on a Canucks Hockey talk board than anywhere else online.

The end result is that we were given a sideshow that was based on little to no evidence. A stock's price tanks for no reason (unless you're trading). And we have more conspiracy and confusion in the medical field. There was no reason for the president to be involved, except that was a chance to be in front of the cameras.

I pretty much agree there was no reason for the President to be involved. The President exaggerates, yet the FDA's statement is fairly unexceptional, and its the kind of thing that gets covered in more than the trades only when there's a specific public interest in the drug or disease.

But is there no reason? I've been thinking about what the reason for making this a big deal could be. I mean, we are entering conjecture world here for the purpose of throwing things against the wall to see what might stick. No firm accusations, just WTF is going on? There's the corruption angle as you speculate on with the trading observation.

Here's another possible angle. There had to be another "reason" for autism other than vaccines. RFK Jr's been caricatured as a vaccine-denier (whatever that means) and therefore a science-denier for questioning convention (an accusation by those no understanding that scientific epistemology holds all knowledge is tentative), when it seems to me he is a skeptic, especially of the product of systems which have conflicts of interest present in the process. But he can be those things, the process can be flawed, AND vaccines can not have causal relationship with autism. If RFK is seen as blaming vaccines for everything, then it has the effect of undermining rather mundane policy like the FDA's current covid vaccine policy which only brought the USA closer in line with the rest of the world. So here we have it -- a thing (the cause of autism) that some have ascribed to vaccines (or vaccine reagents), including RFK as a plaintiff's lawyer, and RFK the secretary is saying "there's a different potential cause to focus on", therefore its not all vaccines causing all ills all the time.

Another angle, RFK and Trump both implausibly made an announcement that they'd have "an answer" to a question that's extremely difficult to answer with a high level of confidence. They subjected themselves to a deadline. And so with the deadline, FDA comes out with the best it could stating the claim as tentatively and measured as it could, and Trump decided he needs to have a MISSION ACCOMPLISHED moment to move past it.

It is silly theater. Which was kind of the inevitable conclusion of the project on this timeline with this promise to begin with. Its not how science works, but you know, it is how Trump works.

[Cornuck]

It is silly theater. Which was kind of the inevitable conclusion of the project on this timeline with this promise to begin with. Its not how science works, but you know, it is how Trump works.

It's a little more than 'silly theatre'. You need to remember that about 1/3 of the population is pretty much illiterate. They'll read the headline and think, "if I'm pregnant, I shouldn't take tylenol" - where currently Tylenol is one of the best ways to calm a fever during pregnancy (from what I've read - no personal experience) - and that not dealing with a fever during pregnancy can lead to serious issues for the baby.

There's a right way and a wrong way to present medical advice to the general population. This was not it.

[Meds]

Good posts re autism, Per, both on the questions that need to be asked when presented with correlative info (e.g., is there also correlation between painkiller use and underlying conditions that may have a causal influence) and also precaution about jumping to the conclusion that it needs to be "fixed" except in those circumstances where it is truly debilitating.

I think the same observation may apply to many of the mental conditions American society (not sure about Canada or Sweden) medicalizes -- ADHD, anxiety, depression -- and I bet we could also list a series of impressive creative people who have been afflicted with one or more of these. To be sure, I know people who's lives were transformed remarkably for the better when they took SSRIs, but there are many counterexamples of people who aren't materially better but just different. And dependent. And sadly, I have one friend who experienced the increased s**cidal ideations once on a new drug (known side effect) and then acted on it. I guess that ended his depression.

The neurodivergent spectrum of disorders is a curious one.

I don't think there is anything more than a genetic component to autism, aspergers, or the like. I have a bit of a theory, and I have no clue where to actually get numbers for it.....

When you look at the majority of human science and technical advancement throughout our recorded history, the vast majority of those individuals are described as people who were almost certainly in the category of those "disorders" that I mentioned above. I would postulate that, regardless of which side of the creation/evolution/alien seeding argument you sit on, those disorders are not "mistakes". They are necessary members of the human race in order for our species to progress in knowledge, understanding, and technical invention.

We currently have a global population that is a shade north of 8.1 billion people.

In 1905 when Albert Einstein discovered the theory of relativity the population of the world was around 1.65 billion people.

The estimates differ by country, however globally the estimated population of people on the autism spectrum is around 1%. Percentages are congruent to totals. Autism was not recognized as an official diagnosis until the latter half of the 20th century, and it was only added to the DSM-III in 1980.

Considering that the autism spectrum now incorporates, Aspergers, Pervasive Developmental Disorder, and Childhood Disintegrative Disorder, one has to ask, are we seeing more of these people simply because there are way more of us on the planet now? Looking back to my school days I can certainly see that there were a number of people that I regularly interacted with in classes, even a few on sports teams, who would certainly fit under at least the Aspergers diagnosis. Almost all of them were either insanely smart in math, science, and (to an extent) history, struggled in classes like English, few were good at art (although I've read some stuff that suggest artists like Michelangelo were almost certainly on the spectrum), but a fair chunk were incredibly gifted musically (if not natural ears, then insane theory and technical ability).

ADHD was not as obviously "rampant" as it is now.

I don't think there is any sort of nurture component to the disorders on the Autism spectrum. I think that you can provide nurture that enables, or helps, these individuals cope and interact more easily and "appropriately" with the rest of society, but beyond that they are simply who they are.

I do think that ADHD has a massive nurture component and I don't like that it is put on the neurodivergent list with autism, but thankfully it has not been lumped in on the autism spectrum. I also think that a portion of ADHD is actually a natural part of the way a male brain works.....and it shows up in varying degrees. Classically men learn from hands on methods of learning. For men to fully learn the theory of things they have to put it in to application. Getting hands on with something is typically the most effective way of learning for us. Men are capable of overcoming this and applying themselves academically, but for some it takes more effort than others. Men are far more heavily effected by device use, and fare more easily distracted by screens.....and there is an observable correspondence between device/screen time and ADHD behaviours.

All this to say that I think when it comes to the autism spectrum, perhaps we are trying to find a "cure" where none is required. Perhaps this is a situation where the normal majority needs to recognize that this abnormal group of individuals is actually a normal minority in the species with a specific purpose.

[Meds]

It is silly theater. Which was kind of the inevitable conclusion of the project on this timeline with this promise to begin with. Its not how science works, but you know, it is how Trump works.

It's a little more than 'silly theatre'. You need to remember that about 1/3 of the population is pretty much illiterate. They'll read the headline and think, "if I'm pregnant, I shouldn't take tylenol" - where currently Tylenol is one of the best ways to calm a fever during pregnancy (from what I've read - no personal experience) - and that not dealing with a fever during pregnancy can lead to serious issues for the baby.

Well in that case Corn you should either put up or shut up.....if you aren't willing to get pregnant you shouldn't have an opinion.

[Blob Mckenzie]

Same asshole President said for folks to drink bleach or lysol to kill Covid

Mëds probably has jugs of the shit in his ambo in Yellowknife.,

Its "giggle juice" the 7 foot strapping Asian man says as he bounds out of the ambulance with a jug of bear spray, terrorizing innocent street people.